privacy engineer

My guest this week is Jay Averitt, Senior Privacy Product Manager and Privacy Engineer at Microsoft, where he transitioned his career from Technology Attorney to Privacy Counsel, and most recently to Privacy Engineer.

In this episode, we hear from Jay about: his professional path from a degree in Management Information Systems to Privacy Engineer; how Twitter and Microsoft navigated a privacy setup, and how to determine privacy program maturity; multiple of his Privacy Engineering community projects; and tips on how to spread privacy awareness and stay active within the industry. 

Topics Covered:

• Jay’s unique professional journey from Attorney to Privacy Engineer
• Jay’s big mindset shift from serving as Privacy Counsel to Privacy Engineer, from a day-to-day and internal perspective
• Why constant learning is essential in the field of privacy engineering, requiring us to keep up with ever-changing laws, standards, and technologies
• Jay’s comparison of what it's like to work for Twitter vs. Microsoft when it comes to how each company focuses on privacy and data protection 
• Two ways to determine Privacy Program Maturity, according to Jay
• How engineering-focused organizations can unify around a corporate privacy strategy and how privacy pros can connect to people beyond their siloed teams
• Why building and maintaining relationships is the key for privacy engineers to be seen as enablers instead of blockers 
• A detailed look at the 'Technical Privacy Review' process
• A peak into Privacy Quest’s gamified privacy engineering platform and the events that Jay & Debra are leading as part of its DPD'24 Festival Village month-long puzzles and events
• Debra's & Jay's experiences at the USENIX PEPR'23; why it provided so much value for them both; and, why you should consider attending PEPR'24  
• Ways to utilize online Slack communities, LinkedIn, and other tools to stay active in the privacy engineering world

Resources Mentioned:

• Review talks from the University of Illinois 'Privacy Everywhere Conference 2024'
• Join the Privacy Quest Village's 'Data Privacy Day’24 Festival' (through Feb 18th)
• Submit a Proposal / Register for the USENIX PEPR ‘24 Conference

Guest Info:

• Connect with Jay on LinkedIn

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Copyright © 2022 - 2023 Principled LLC. All rights reserved.

My guest this week is Nabanita De, Software Engineer, Serial Entrepreneur, and Founder & CEO at Privacy License where she's on a mission to transform the AI landscape. In this episode, we discuss Nabanita's transition from Engineering Manager at Remitly to startup founder; what she's learned from her experience at Antler's accelerator program, her first product to market: PrivacyGPT and her work to educate Privacy Champions. 

Topics Covered:

• Nabanita’s origin story, from conducting AI research at Microsoft as an intern all the way to founding Privacy License
• How Privacy License supports enterprises entering the global market while protecting privacy as a human right
• A comparison between Nabanita's experience as a corporate role as Privacy Engineering Manager at Remitly versus her entrepreneurial role as Founder-in-Residence at Antler
• How PrivacyGPT, a Chrome browser plugin, empowers people to use ChatGPT with added privacy protections and without compromising data privacy standards by redacting sensitive and personal data before sending to ChatGPT
• NLP techniques that Nabanita leveraged to build out PrivacyGPT, including: 'regular expressions,' 'parts of speech tagging,' & 'name entity recognition'
• How PrivacyGPT can be used to protect privacy across nearly all languages, even where a user has no Internet connection
• How to use Product Hunt to gain visibility around a newly-launched product; and whether it's easier to raise a financial round in the AI space right now
• Nabanita’s advice for software engineers who might found a privacy or AI startup in the near future
• Why Nabanita created a Privacy Champions Program; and how it provides (non)-privacy folks with recommendations to prioritize privacy within their organizations
• How to sign up for PrivacyGPT’s paid pilot app, connect with Nabanita to collaborate, or subscribe to "Nabanita's Moonshots Newsletter" on LinkedIn

Resources Mentioned:

• Check out Privacy License
• Learn more about PrivacyGPT
• Install the PrivacyGPT Chrome Extension
• Learn about Data Privacy Week 2024

Guest Info:

• Connect with Nabanita on LinkedIn
• Subscribe to the Nabanita's Moonshots Newsletter
• Learn more about The Nabinita De Foundation 
• Learn more about Covid Help for India
• Learn more about Project FiB

Privado.ai
Privacy assurance at the speed of product development. Get instant visibility w/ privacy code scans.

Shifting Privacy Left Media
Where privacy engineers gather, share, & learn

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Copyright © 2022 - 2023 Principled LLC. All rights reserved.

This week, I welcome Jutta Williams, Head of Privacy & Assurance at Reddit, Co-founder of Humane Intelligence and BiasBounty.ai, Privacy & Responsible AI Evangelist, and Startup Board Advisor. With a long history of accomplishments in privacy engineering, Jutta has a unique perspective on the growing field.

In our conversation, we discuss her transition from security engineering to privacy engineering; how privacy cultures differ across social media companies where she's worked: Google, Facebook, Twitter, and now Reddit; the overlap of the privacy engineering & responsible AI; how her non-profit, Humane Intelligence, supports AI model owners; her experience launching the largest Generative AI Red Teaming challenge ever at DEF CON; and, how a curious knowledge-enhancing approach to privacy will create engagement and allow for fun.

Topics Covered:

• How Jutta’s unique transition from security engineering landed her in the privacy engineering space. 
• A comparison of privacy cultures across Google, Facebook, Twitter (now 'X'), and Reddit based on her privacy engineering experiences there.
• Two open Privacy Engineering roles at Reddit, and Jutta's advice for those wanting to transition from security engineering to privacy engineering.
• Whether Privacy Pros will be responsible for owning new regulatory obligations under the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA) & the Digital Markets Act (DMA); and the role of the Privacy Engineer when overlapping with Responsible AI issues
• Humane Intelligence,  Jutta's 'side quest,' which she co-leads with Dr. Rumman Chowdhury, and supports AI model owners seeking 'Product Readiness Reviews' at scale.
• When, during the product development life cycle, companies should perform 'AI Readiness Reviews'
• How to de-biased at scale or whether attempting to do so is 'chasing windmills'
• Who should be hunting for biases in an AI Bias Bounty challenge
• DEF CON 31's AI Village's 'Generative AI Red Teaming Challenge,' which was a bias bounty that she co-designed; lessons learned; and what Jutta & team have planned for DEF CON 32 next year
• Why it's so important for people to 'love their side quests'

Resources Mentioned:

• DEF CON Generative Red Team Challenge
• Humane Intelligence
• Bias Buccaneers Challenge

Guest Info:

• Connect with Jutta on LinkedIn

Privado.ai
Privacy assurance at the speed of product development. Get instant visibility w/ privacy code scans.

Shifting Privacy Left Media
Where privacy engineers gather, share, & learn

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Copyright © 2022 - 2023 Principled LLC. All rights reserved.

This week, we're chatting with Engin Bozdag, Senior Staff Privacy Architect at Uber, and Stefano Bennati, Privacy Engineer at HERE Technologies. Today, we explore their recent IWPE'23 talk, "Can Location Data Truly be Anonymized: a risk-based approach to location data anonymization" and discuss the technical & business challenges to obtain anonymization. We also discuss the role of Privacy Engineers, how to choose a career path, and the importance of embedding privacy into product development & DevPrivOps; collaborating with cross-functional teams; & staying up-to-date with emerging trends.

Topics Covered:

• Common roadblocks privacy engineers face with anonymization techniques & how to overcome them
• How to get budgets for anonymization tools; challenges with scaling & regulatory requirements & how to overcome them
• What it means to be a 'Privacy Engineer' today; good career paths; and necessary skill sets
• How third-party data deletion tools can be integrated into a company's distributed architecture
• What Privacy Engineers should understand about vendor privacy requirements for LLMs before bringing them into their orgs
• The need to monitor code changes in data or source code via code scanning; how HERE Technologies uses Privado to monitor the compliance of its products & data lineage; and how Privado detects new assets added to your inventory & any new API endpoints
• Advice on how to deal with conflicts between engineering, legal & operations teams and hon how to get privacy issues fixed within an org
• Strategies for addressing privacy issues within orgs, including collaboration, transparency, and continuous refinement

Resources Mentioned:

• IAPP Defining Privacy Engineering Infographic
• EU AI Act
• Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI
• Privacy Engineering Superheroes
• FTC Investigates OpenAI over Data Leak and ChatGPT’s Inaccuracy

Guest Info:

• Follow Engin
• Follow Stefano

Privado.ai
Privacy assurance at the speed of product development. Get instant visibility w/ privacy code scans.

Shifting Privacy Left Media
Where privacy engineers gather, share, & learn

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Copyright © 2022 - 2023 Principled LLC. All rights reserved.

Nishant Bhajaria is the Director of Privacy Engineering, Architecture, & Analytics at Uber and Author of "Data Privacy: A Runbook for Engineers.” He’s also an Advisor to Data Protocol, Privado & Piiano. In our conversation, we discuss privacy engineering trends, educational materials that Nishant has developed, and his advice to privacy technologists, engineers, and hiring managers. 

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Thank you to our sponsor, Privado, the developer-friendly privacy platform
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Nishant is a great example of a cross-functional, influential agent who has adapted to the ever-growing privacy discipline. He describes himself as an engineer for the attorneys and an attorney for the engineers, which has helped him secure positions at WebMD, Nike, Netflix, and now Uber. 

Nishant shares his advice for career development, both through the lens of how to break into the privacy space and also how to grow within your role. He explains how he’s been able to get board-level understanding about the importance of privacy as a product, not an afterthought. He also highlights takeaways from his book and online courses.

Topics Covered:

• How privacy engineers can secure their jobs during this widespread tech industry layoff 
• Privacy tech as the glue between different teams and in-house services
• How to make privacy more visible to the business as something that benefits the bottom line 
• Common mistakes that Nishant sees engineers make when it comes to privacy 
• What’s covered in Nishant’s ‘Privacy by Design’ courses 

Resources Mentioned:

• Buy Data Privacy: A Runbook for Engineers 
• Check out the Privacy Engineering Certification Course 

Guest Info:

• Follow Nishant on LinkedIn 

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Privado.ai
Privacy assurance at the speed of product development. Get instant visibility w/ privacy code scans.

Shifting Privacy Left Media
Where privacy engineers gather, share, & learn

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Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Copyright © 2022 - 2023 Principled LLC. All rights reserved.